chapter eighteen

IT’S early in the day still and I don’t know where we are going. Gloria drags me along demolished streets, where there are mangy dogs and people pulling carts. She explains to me that Sukhumi was a nice town before the war, a seaside resort where people came on vacation to soak up the sun and enjoy the beaches. In summer, under the palms trees and the flowering tangerine trees, people used to eat ice cream, barefoot in sandals. It’s the pure and simple truth. Now Sukhumi is an ugly place, and if people walk barefoot, it’s because they’ve lost their shoes under the ruins of what was once their home. Only a few vestiges of the past glory days remain: big, empty hotels; waterless fountains; rusty pontoons on the shore; and collapsed walls. Still, I try to imagine how magnificent it must have been here, before the bombs, before the soldiers and the fear. I’d like to understand why those days are gone, but I know that it’s a waste of time. Gloria will only tell me again to leave the Caucasus where it is, that it’s not the concern of a French boy. That we have to hurry along.

“Why don’t you tell me where we’re going? Is it a surprise?” I ask her.

She doesn’t answer, so I grow suspicious.

“Good or bad?” I ask.

Gloria pulls on my hand. I jump over the deep, rainfilled potholes of the avenues.

Finally we arrive in front of a large building. There are letters, partly erased, above the door. I read: PU_LI_ BA__

“Puliba?” I say.

Gloria winks at me. “Come on.”

We go through the front door and enter an echoing hall. Several women with children are in line in front of a counter managed by a heavy lady with tired eyes. We give her a few coins before taking a flight of stairs that goes underground.

“I knew we would be lucky,” Gloria tells me. “The water has not been cut off yet.”

Once we’re downstairs, warm steam and the scent of perfumed soap suffocate me. Finally I understand that, including the missing letters, “puliba” means “Public Baths.”

Gloria removes her shoes and then all her clothes. I’m startled by how plump she is. I stand on the tiled floor, frozen like a statue.

“Come on, Koumaïl, don’t be a baby!” Gloria laughs. “You’ve faced more difficult situations before!”

I think about what I’ve lived through since the Terrible Accident, and I know she’s right. A moment later, as bare as worms, we disappear into the deliciously warm cloud of the hammam.

*   *   *

I let go of my tiredness, my fear, even some of my sadness, and let them run down the drain with the water of the showers; I feel much lighter. When we come out, we’re as red as newborn babies.

Gloria’s cheeks probably look as appetizing and shiny as the apples in Vassili’s orchard. She combs my hair, buttons my shirt, and looks at me with satisfaction.

“You’re as clean as a new coin!” she says. “I’m sure that you’ll please Mr. Ha.”

I’ve never heard of Mr. Ha. “Is this another surprise?” I want to know. “And why do I need to please him?”

“Stop asking questions and follow me,” Gloria says. “We have something very important to take care of before curfew.”

I hang on to her hand, and we make our way along the streets in the opposite direction.

Mr. Ha is a Chinese man. He’s waiting for us at the back of a hash house, where other Chinese people are eating spicy soup in silence. My mouth starts to salivate, but we haven’t come here to fill our stomachs.

Mr. Ha takes us to a room barely larger than a cupboard and closed off by a curtain. Gloria takes a wad of dollars out of her pocket, along with our passports.

Mr. Ha looks at them. He smiles.

“Ah, yes, France!” he says. “What a beautiful country!”

He pockets the dollars and then directs me to a stool. I wince. Is he going to shave my hair like creepy Sergei? I wonder.

“Come on,” Gloria encourages me. “You have nothing to fear.”

I sit down cautiously. Mr. Ha rummages behind the curtain and then brings out a gleaming camera that stands on a tripod. He positions it in front of me. I turn toward Gloria. I get it! I’m getting a new picture for my passport! That’s why we went to the puliba first! A French kid can’t be dirty.

“Look this way,” Mr. Ha orders me. “That’s good. Now keep your eyes on the lens and think about the Eiffel Tower.”

I frown. “What eiffeltower?” I say.

“Come on, young man, everyone knows the Eiffel Tower!”

I shake my head. All I know are the pages in my atlas with the names of towns, rivers, mountains—I can even tell you the distance in kilometers between Paris and Marseille—but I have never seen a tower with the name Eiffel.

Mr. Ha sighs and heads behind his curtain. He comes back with a sort of catalog. There’s a picture on each page—a picture that represents one of France’s monuments.

“There!” he says, showing me. “That’s the Eiffel Tower. Take a good look.”

I stare at the image of a big iron edifice in the shape of an arrow planted in the blue sky. The caption, in Russian, says, “The Eiffel Tower, the Champ de Mars, the Seine, the Iéna Bridge, the riverboats.”

“So, young man? Are you ready?”

I look up at the lens. I think very hard about this pointed tower, the bridge arched over the Seine, and I imagine that I’m on it. Click!

“Perfect! A true little Parisian!” Mr. Ha laughs. “All right, now. Off you go!”

As Gloria sits on the stool to be photographed, I flip through the catalog. That’s how I discover Montmartre and its artists, the crowded Champs-Elysées, the Palace of Versailles, Chartres Cathedral, the Bridge of the Gard, and also Mont-Saint-Michel, which is surrounded by the sea.

Mr. Ha leans over my shoulder. He looks with me at the sea, the sand, and the golden angel at the top of the mount.

“You can have the booklet, if you want it,” he tells me. “Learn everything, my boy, you’ll need it.”

He suggests that we come back in two days, and we leave the hash house followed by the stares of the soup eaters.

Outside it’s almost twilight. It will be curfew soon; it’s time to go back to our refuge. With Mr. Ha’s catalog under my arm, I ask Gloria what we’ll do when we have our passports.

“We’ll be able to go wherever we want,” Gloria answers. “Jeanne and Blaise Fortune will be free citizens.”

I think about this, puzzled. Although I know that my real name is Blaise, I feel sad at the idea of abandoning Koumaïl. The day we board the boat, I know a part of me will stay in Sukhumi like a piece of luggage abandoned on the dock. A suitcase filled with memories and regrets.

Suddenly I have an idea, and I pull on Gloria’s sleeve.

“If you become Jeanne, I’ll have to call you Mother for real,” I say.

Gloria looks at me so seriously that it cuts my breath short.

“Do you think you can do that?” she wants to know.

I think about it; then I nod and repeat what she told me the day we were sitting at the entryway of Kopeckochka.

“There’s nothing wrong with making up stories to make life more bearable,” I tell her.